No doubt the folks at Jeep want you to think of every new Cherokee as a Trailhawk model. Armed with a two-speed transfer case, a one-inch suspension lift, skid plates, three bright-red tow hooks, and Firestone all-terrain tires, the Trailhawk is the rock-crawling mascot for this otherwise soft-roading shopping trolley. You can see the Trailhawk in television commercials, splashing through a muddy trough and bobbling over boulders, burnishing this new Cherokee’s image and upholding Jeep’s sacred reputation.

The Jeep pictured on these pages is not a Trailhawk. It is a Cherokee Limited, a crossover much closer to what people will—and should—buy from their local dealers. The approach angle, wading depth, and crawl ratio of this unibody, transverse-engine ute are unlikely to factor into anyone’s commute or errands. This is Fiat Chrysler’s Ford Escape, its Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4. It’s the competent, family-friendly compact crossover that’s been absent from every Chrysler-group showroom for the past decade.

Not that Jeep hasn’t tried to master this segment before. The 2014 Jeep Cherokee packs the intent of the Patriot and Compass into a package closer in size to the larger, outmoded Liberty. Rest assured that the Cherokee is a contemporary machine, unlike any of those three Jeeps conceived during the darkest days of the Daimler era.

If you have eyes, you’ve noticed that this Cherokee, code-named KL, makes no design references, other than with the grille, to the iconic, rectilinear XJ Cherokee. This does not bother us. That the two share a name is nothing more than a shrewd decision on the part of the marketing department. So ignore the vocal throng upset that this Cherokee doesn’t look like a cardboard box. If you want your brand-new vehicle to pack the simplicity and styling of a 13-year-old model, you should make haste to the nearest Mahindra truck dealership, which is probably in New Delhi. Even if it’s a fleeting fashion statement, the Chero­kee beats the anonymity that is typical with family crossovers.

At $30,990, the four-wheel-drive Limited model starts $500 higher than the Trailhawk and trades capability for creature comfort. Instead of the off-roader’s low-range four-wheel drive, locking rear differential, and V-6 engine, the top trim features standard navigation, leather, remote start, a backup camera, and heated front seats and steering wheel. In our test vehicle, the stand­ard 2.4-liter four-cylinder was replaced by the V-6 for $1495. On top of that, our Limited was festooned with high-intensity-discharge headlamps, ventilated seats, a towing package, an upgraded navigation unit, and more, for a total—and totally ludicrous—price of $37,525.

The $2155 Technology Group is pure fat, a driver-assistance suite to prevent unintentional off-roading by the inattentive. It includes adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning, lane-departure warning, and an electronic dance festival’s worth of beeps and flashing lights. There’s even a self-parking system that will steer you into parallel or perpendicular spaces and, if you let it, the pile of snow plowed onto the parking-lot berm.

None of these aids is as aggravating as the rear cross-path detection. Intended to warn of an approaching car as you back out of a parking space or driveway, it also picks up less-threatening objects, such as an adjacent row of hedges or, on a steep driveway apron, the surface of the street. In addition to an audible warning tone when it senses something’s not right, cross-path detection jams on the brakes with an equally audible grinding crunch from the ABS system. You can disable the system via the touch screen, but at least one driver resorted to the brute-force hack of backing out so fast that the computers didn’t have time to react.

The driver-assistance suite isn’t fully baked, but we wouldn’t buy it even if it were flawless. Fortunately, the Jeep team had more success with the fundamentals. When it comes to driving—the kind where a human is in control of and responsible for the vehicle’s every move—the Cherokee goes down the road with the composure of its big brother, the Grand Cherokee. It is comfortable, planted, and powerful.

The 3.2-liter V-6 is a lonely six in a world of turbocharged fours. Like the 3.6-liter engine it’s based on, the Cherokee’s V-6 teems with energy at high revs while a short first gear bolsters low-end response. It’s a powertrain that makes known every one of its vigorous 271 horsepower and stout 239 pound-feet of torque. Our Limited punched through 60 mph in 6.9 seconds and continued through the quarter-mile mark in 15.3 seconds at 90 mph, faster than any competi­tor we’ve tested. The big engine also brings a relatively large towing capacity (4500 pounds) and is quiet when cruising, save for a slight, basso exhaust drone at 50 mph.

Front-wheel drive is standard fare, but our tester powered all four wheels when conditions warranted. In the most basic of the three available four-wheel-drive systems, an electronically controlled clutch pack ahead of the rear differential sends as much as 60 percent of the engine’s torque to the rear when all four wheels have traction. The large Selec-Terrain knob offers auto, snow, sport, and sand/mud settings, redirecting electrons to alter torque distribution, transmission shift points, and stability- and traction-control thresholds.

The Cherokee is the first vehicle to host ZF’s nine-speed automatic transmission, though for our purposes it might as well have been an eight-speed. We’re told it takes 75 mph and a dead-flat or slightly downhill stretch of road for the top gear to come into play. Despite every interstate in Michigan meeting those conditions, we never once saw the transmission choose ninth.

Pull the shifter into its manual gate and you can force the gauge cluster to indicate ninth, yet the tach needle doesn’t budge from the 2000-rpm mark. Chrysler engineers draw a distinction between a true manual shift mode—dubbed AutoStick—and the variant used in utility vehicles, which is called Electronic Range Select. With ERS, the transmission won’t shift higher than the selected gear—useful for towing or off-roading—but it will hold a lower ratio if it’s more efficient.

Engineers were wary of a calibration that bounced between eighth and ninth on the highway, and they certainly avoided that. No matter the gear, the transmission never waffles. Quite the opposite. It takes a heavy boot to convince the gearbox to downshift, enough that you might have to recalibrate your right foot. The transmission software is much more sensitive to how quickly you depress the throttle than how far you push it.

Still, it is the best transmission Chrysler has delivered in generations. Shifts are generally smooth and reasonably quick, even too quick at times. The upshifts into second and third gears are consistently as snappy as a Porsche dual-clutch transmission at full throttle in sport-plus mode.

We’re still waiting for proof that we actually need transmissions with this many cogs. Chrysler says ninth doesn’t play a role in any of the EPA’s five fuel-economy driving cycles, and it’s hard to believe that the extra ratios were much of a boon to us on the road. While the towing package’s shorter final-drive ratio certainly didn’t help, we were disappointed to average 18 mpg over 1000 miles, four less than the EPA’s combined rating.

The Cherokee’s 4141-pound curb weight can’t help fuel economy, either. The Cherokee is a heavyweight in the segment, roughly 300 pounds huskier than a four-wheel-drive Ford Escape. Yet all that mass is carried as if it’s toned muscle rather than flab. The Chero­kee bounds through suburban traffic with tidy body control, a compliant ride, and nicely weighted steering. It’s not as sprightly as a Mazda CX-5, and there’s a bit of side-to-side head toss over the worst pavement, but the Cherokee’s on-road manners are near the top of the field. Its driving dynamics are far ahead of the apathy that passes for par among crossovers. The Jeep isn’t shabby at the track, either. We measured stops from 70 mph in 166 feet and generated 0.79 g of lateral grip on the skidpad.

The Cherokee’s bones come from a familiar yet evolving DNA. Based on the “Compact U.S. Wide” platform that also underpins the Dodge Dart and the 2015 Chrysler 200, the Jeep is by leaps an improvement over the Dodge.

The interior is a similar parts-bin mélange. Every new Chrysler product uses the same steering wheel, switches, knobs, and digital graphics. From behind the wheel, this $38,000 Cherokee has more than a passing resemblance to a $19,000 Dart, which doesn’t look all that different than a $130,000 SRT Viper. This isn’t entirely bad. The Cherokee offers comfortable seats, decent materials, and quality fitments. Chrysler’s Uconnect infotainment is among the best outside of the luxury brands. Sharing provides necessary economies of scale for a cash-limited company. But if Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is going to foster eight brands in the U.S. (plus a ninth with Alfa Romeo), it’ll need a much larger parts bin.

Jeep wants customers to picture a Trailhawk when they see a Jeep Cherokee; it can’t allow them to think of a Dodge Dart. Fortunately, the Jeep Cherokee is good enough in the right places that, Trailhawk or not, it’s at least earned its place in the thick of the lucrative crossover business.

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